He barked out a single laugh, ran a hand over his hair, and held out his hand. “You wanted blood.”
She took his hand, folded his fingers back out of the way, and jabbed his thumb with a needle, then held it over the bowl and squeezed out a few drops of blood. Releasing his hand, she used a small bamboo paddle to stir the mess. “I could not find any kesum. People here do not recognize my descriptions of it; I believe it does not grow here. I have substituted another form of coriander. The ointment accepted the spell, but I think it is not stable. Smear it on your face now.”
He grimaced, disliking putting the smelly stuff near his nose, but did as she’d bidden him.
“Hmm.” She stared at him, her eyes narrowed. His wolf did not like being stared at. “It worked.”
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
“I was right. The spell is unstable. It will break apart too quickly.” She handed him a damp rag. “You may as well wipe it off. I will try again.”
He scrubbed his face. “What did I look like?”
“You looked as I expected you to look.”
“And that is helpful in some way?”
“Tch. It is mind magic, but it is not illusion. I told you that. It does not change your appearance, but the reactions of those around you. Anyone who sees your face when the ointment is working will think you look familiar. The way you should look. One person may think you look like his neighbor, who is very tall. Another may later be unable to recall what you looked like, but will swear he knows you from somewhere. Another might believe you look a bit like his uncle.”
“So if I looked in a mirror when this stuff was smeared on me, I’d just see my own face because that’s what I expect to see.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “But only for a few minutes. I must try again.”
? ? ?
Two days later
The western sky blazed crimson. The eastern sky was already dark. Dusk wrapped the chún-chún, slightly dispelled by mage lights set fore and aft. An owl’s call floated out upon air scented by river and the nearby forest. Water lapped against the boat’s hull.
Rule did not find the liquid music of the water soothing. He wanted to hunt. Needed to hunt, to run on four legs, to—
“The moon will be full soon,” Li Lei Yu observed.
He could not have what he wanted. Not yet. “Not that soon. Four more days. How is the disguise goo coming?” She’d gotten the last batch to last thirty minutes.
“I do not think it will stabilize further without the kesum, and I do not have the time or ingredients to devise a completely different medium to hold the spell. It will have to be invoked at the last moment. Are you jumpy because the full moon draws near? Or because your lady is urging you to hurry?”
He shrugged. “I’m too jumpy to tell why I’m jumpy.”
“Ah.”
He ought to be going over the plan again. He’d had little enough to do on this journey but think, think and plan, and come up with possible scenarios, potential problems . . . and in the end, what happened wouldn’t follow any of the possible scripts he’d considered. But considering those possibilities helped him avoid the obvious pitfalls and kept his mind fluid.
At least he hoped he was avoiding the obvious pitfalls. A great deal depended on Madame—on Grandmother, he corrected himself. He didn’t like that part of the plan. He had great confidence in her, but what she proposed to do . . . though at least she knew what she was getting into. Knew a great deal more about that than he did, he admitted. It had been her idea.
Grandmother interrupted the downward drift of his thoughts. “The boat father says we will reach the capital in two or three days.”
He glanced at her. She was looking out over the dark river, her gaze unfocused. “Or four, if the magistrate at our next stop is especially dilatory.” The magistrate of Liangzhou often kept the boat father waiting while he finished preparing his official correspondence. “You haven’t read all of the last magistrate’s papers.”
“I will finish tonight.”
They’d had an unpleasant surprise two stops back. An official had tried to detain Gan when they left the ship to purchase supplies, including more ingredients for Madame to try in her disguise goo. Madame had promptly ensorcelled the man. Turned out that the government had sent out an alert—but for Gan, not Rule. Gan had been seen when she brought Cynna to this realm, and the spawn had sent out a directive to detain “an unusually short female being of demon heritage with orange skin and blue hair.” Gan’s hair might be black now, but her height and skin color were harder to disguise.
Madame had told the official that “this is not the being you are looking for,” which had damn near made Rule burst out laughing. He couldn’t get her to admit she’d quoted Obi Wan on purpose. Her eyes had twinkled, though.
So Gan was restricted to the boat when they were docked unless she went dashtu, and Madame had decided they needed additional intelligence. She was gathering that by raiding and reading the official mail their boat picked up, which was kept in a magically sealed pouch and locked up in a trunk in the cabin. Neither the magical nor the mundane lock was a problem for her, but the reading was a challenge. The characters were not written the way she was used to, making it slow going.
She’d gone through the official correspondence from two magistrates and was working on the third batch . . . in full view of the beastmaster family. They didn’t notice. She’d told them not to. She hadn’t found anything suggesting that officials were watching for Rule. She had found references to preparations the spawn had directed their magistrates to make. Those references were maddeningly vague.
Rule asked, “But you’ve seen nothing interesting? Nothing related to those mysterious preparations?”
“These documents are much the same as the others. A long report about a project to drain swampy land. A reply to a question about the tax rolls. Another related to the number of mutant births. Copies of various documents that are routinely sent to the capital—official commendations and reprimands, summaries of legal cases. And a request for clarification regarding ‘those preparations upon which we embarked per decree number 37, Year of Heavenly Guidance 137.’”
“Does the request for clarification clarify anything for us?”
“The magistrate wants to know if there was a clerical error involved in the number of casks of rice to be secured. He is politely incredulous and does not think the number stated could be correct.”
Casks of rice. “Does he say what that number is?”
“No.”
Rule shook his head. “Not much help, then. It suggests they may be stockpiling food, but without knowing why . . . the spawn could be expecting a bad crop year, or engaged in natural disaster planning. They might want to drive up the cost of rice. They might intend to start distributing food among the poor.”